Ron “Quincy Adams” DeSantis: The Search For Monsters To Destroy Stops Now!

The political gods willing, we might be heading for a twofer. That is, a solid GOP conservative presidential candidate who can keep the Donald off the ticket, and then actually use the powers of the Oval Office to end the current horrid regime of bipartisan Forever Wars.

This unexpected ray of hope erupted from Tucker Carlson’s very savvy questionnaire to the GOP presidential hopefuls. And just like Governor DeSantis figured out quickly that liberty and the constitution required stiff resistance to Washington’s Covid lockdowns and mandates, he has now also come on strong for homeland security policies which harken back to the principles of America’s founders.

Namely, a return to John Quincy Adam’s stirring admonitions of two centuries ago, which eloquently set the tone for a non-interventionist foreign policy. The latter is the only policy framework that is compatible with limited, fiscally solvent, constitutional government at home, which Republican’s profess to hold sacred; and also peaceful commerce with the nations of the world, which is where free market capitalism goes if not shackled by phony national security restrictions and sanctions.

Yet DeSantis’ response to the questionnaire was literally the first time a serious Republican presidential candidate not bearing the surname of “Paul” has advocated for a non-interventionist policy since the days of Senator Robert Taft in the 1940s and 1950s. Rejecting the folly of Washington’s open-ended intervention in Ukraine and its proxy war on Russia, the Florida governor echoed Adam’s famous words like rarely before.

As a reminder, here is what America’s then Secretary of State famously said in a 4th of July oration in 1821,

Whenever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice,and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

Needless to say, non-intervention has not been her practice for a goodly part of the past century. Washington has literally scoured the earth in search of purported monsters—Ho Chi Minh, Salvador Allende, Daniel Ortega, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Kim family, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and countless more—who actually posed no serious threat to America’s homeland security at all.